Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

Tá cúig nóiméad agam agus táim ag roinnt an ama sin leis an Teachta Naughten. Gabhaim míle buíochas le mo chomhghleacaithe sa Ghrúpa Réigiúnach as an mBille seo a chur os comhair na Dála. Gabhaim míle buíochas leis an iarSheanadóir, Pádraig Ó Céidigh, a chum an Bille seo, agus le Cáit Nic Amhlaidh as an gcabhair a thug sí dó. Is Bille an-tábhachtach é gan dabht.

I thank Ms Linda Murray who owns a small business in my home town of Navan. She is one of the many businesspeople throughout the country who have been forced over the past five or ten years to become campaigners in their particular sector. Businesspeople are busy. Ms Murray is a mother and had no intent or interest in getting involved in any level of campaigning. However, she found herself in a simple situation. She was running a good business but saw her insurance costs spiral from €2,000 per year to about €16,000 per year within a short period of time. She had no option but to start to make a case for people like her around the country.

What is happening in Ireland is incredible. Ms Murray has told me about sectors, especially those dealing with children, which are in bits. She is a representative for the soft play area sector which, thankfully, has managed to find an insurer. Many other businesses have already gone to the wall. Businesses that have never had a single claim are now being refused insurance by insurance companies. Businesses which are operating in the same sector as those in Britain, and are being insured by the same companies in Britain, are being refused insurance or have seen their insurance costs jacked up while their British counterparts have not experienced that in any way.

The insurance costs for one soft play business increased from €50,000 to €150,000 within a short period of time. Some insurance companies have said that anything to do with children will be obsolete in the future because of insurance. Irish dancing classes, football, hurling, etc., will be affected. The leisure industry is stuffed. It is incredible that swathes of our society are in danger of closure or being unable to function in the future because of the massive dysfunction that exists within insurance companies in Ireland. I will be straight. Reform of this dysfunctional sector has been glacial.

The European Commission and the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission felt it necessary to investigate the insurance industry in Ireland. The Central Bank issued a report on the insurance industry in Ireland. In all of this time, very little has happened from a Government perspective. This is a highly profitable sector. A couple of years ago it made hundreds of millions of euro by fleecing Irish people up and down the country. However, that dysfunction has not been tackled.

There are a number of major problems. High legal fees are an issue. I know of an insurance case where the claim was €6,000, but the legal fees for the case were €26,000. We also know that this incentivises the insurance industry. I was involved in a car crash about two years ago when a drunk driver smashed into our people carrier. There were six of us in the car and we were shunted back about ten yards. We received head injuries, bruises and cuts. I spoke to a solicitor who told me he could get €10,000 for each of us in the car and we would not even have to turn up in court. I was raised with the idea that claiming money to which one was not entitled was bad money, and one should not do that because there was a cost and somebody somewhere would have to pay. We did not proceed with a case. The fact of the matter is that there are claims right across the country.

There is also the idea of a duty of care. People can go into a nightclub half cut, can slip and fall and then make a large claim. People can jump on the back of a truck, hitch a ride, fall off and sue the individual who is driving the truck. So much is wrong.

This motion focuses on one element of this. Some Deputies stated that the motion may not have a big effect. A person will think long and hard before he or she perjures himself or herself in a court case in the future because of the penalty in the Bill. It would be interesting if we brought about such a law for Deputies in the House.

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